Jordi Bernadó. Second reconstruction

Mies referred to the Pavilion as a ‘Pavilion of Representation’. An EPHEMERAL building whose maximum value was to REPRESENT AN IDEA.

The aspect of the Pavilion that has endured is therefore an EVOCATION, NOT AN OBJECT. A conceptual, not a material, act. A generator of thought, not a generator of physical space. Consequently, what remains of the Pavilion is the idea and its images. And Mies ordered the Pavilion to be photographed without doors. In Mies’s thought and view, the Pavilion had no doors.

In fact, the Pavilion existed in all its plenitude only when the doors were removed. The moment of the GAZE is the only real moment.

The photographer proposes, through a minimal gesture, to restore the image of the Pavilion by removing the doors.

The Pavilion without doors at last. At its side, doors without a building. The Pavilion reconstructed at last. And the doors out of their setting, by themselves generating the question posed by the intervention. The doors ask the question. The building without doors is the answer.

Photographing is not only fabrication of images (and therefore objectual). It is above all a gaze (and therefore intellectual).

The photographer GAZES. And gazes, presumably and ironically, as Mies did. And curiously enough, it is thanks only to the gaze that the Pavilion once again becomes, temporarily, what Mies imagined.

In this way, the TIME factor is transformed also into a fundamental aspect of the project.

CONCEPT, IMMATERIALITY, TIME, DEVIATION. Ideas with which Mies worked and which constitute the essence of the Pavilion. And which the project reclaims also. As Ms Hock said, ‘Gazing is inventing’.

Jordi Bernadó

Biography
Jordi Bernado (Lleida, 1966). The artist understands photography as a way of conceiving the world. He understands the discipline as a form of knowledge and a tool to see the city, architecture and the artistic activity from another perspective. He has published over 20 books and many of his works have been acquired by public and private collections worldwide. Among others he is the winner of the following awards: Fotopres Scholarship (1993), Endesa Scholarship (2007), Photoespaña best photography book award (2002), the Ministry of Culture Award for best art book of the year (2003) and the award for best experimental film “Hello Ms. Hock “in the Architecture Film Festival of Santiago de Chile (2013).